Every Wild Heart Read online

  Nic forced herself to look down at her turkey-and-cheese sandwich. She thought about what might have happened if she’d been wearing the yellow dress.

  “Um, hotness,” said her friend Lila Dorian. They had the table to themselves.

  Nic bit into her sandwich.

  “That’s Lucas Holt,” Lila told her. “He just moved to town with his mom.” Nic didn’t question how Lila had acquired this information; her friend always seemed to know everything about everyone.

  “I feel like we had a moment there,” Lila said. “Like our eyes connected.” She spoke in a dreamy sort of way, as though she were just thinking out loud. Nic had recently become aware that she had this effect on people—she guessed she said so little herself that people thought speaking to her was the same as speaking to themselves.

  How humiliating that Lila and Nic both had the same silly fantasy running through their heads! Maybe, Nic thought, there wasn’t a dorky girl on earth who didn’t envision a whole new perfect life that would unfurl before her like a red carpet if only a boy like Lucas Holt took notice of her.

  Nic knew how her mother would react to this sort of rescue fantasy: she would groan, pretend to gouge out her own eyeballs with her thumbs, drop down to the floor and do a few big death shudders and then, finally, she’d stick out her tongue and go completely still like she was dead. Gail Gideon was, quite literally, famous for raging against the idea of a woman needing a man to make her life better; she’d made it her life’s mission to enlighten women who’d been brainwashed by what she called the Cinderella Complex. And here was her own daughter, hoping the popular new boy would save her from her—“self-imposed!” Nic’s mother would undoubtedly shout—exile as a wallflower.

  Jasmine Cane had switched seats with Simon Pinelli so that she sat on one side of Lucas and Emory Torres sat on the other. Both girls had their heads cocked toward him.

  “The Lurk is going to have a field day with that situation,” Lila said thoughtfully, eying the threesome.

  Nic felt her stomach twist. TheKirkeLurk7 was an Instagram account that posted photographs of Kirke students accompanied by snarky commentary. No one knew who controlled the account—each time the school managed to shut it down, a new one popped up in its place. According to Lila, this had been going on for years, with different students taking the helm at different points in time.

  Nic didn’t have an Instagram account. She wasn’t on Facebook or Snapchat or Twitter either. She had a cell phone, but her mother, worried that her radio show pulled “the crazies from their cobwebs,” had asked Nic not to have an online presence. Her mother had never been big on rules, so Nic took this one seriously. In truth, her mother’s request was something of a relief to Nic, who was pretty sure that she had enough social anxiety without adding online friending and unfriending and liking and commenting to her life. She didn’t even like when Lila insisted on sharing her own phone so that Nic could see the updates to TheKirkeLurk7’s Instagram feed. Nic kept expecting to see her own face appear on the screen along with whatever damning judgment came by way of the comments below. So far, thankfully, she had not found herself on the Lurk’s radar, but the name alone was enough to set her on edge.

  “Om shalom,” said Lila, shrugging. She was still watching the table of seniors.

  Lila’s father, who owned a chain of yoga studios, had told her to create a mantra that she could repeat in moments of stress. Somehow Lila had landed on the words “om shalom.” Over the weeks that Nic had known her, the mantra had evolved from something Lila whispered when their math teacher announced a pop quiz to something she declared loudly in a bored tone at random intervals, the way another of their classmates might say “whatever.”

  “Om shalom,” Nic said, agreeing. It had been years since she’d truly stuttered, but still, every single time that she spoke clearly, easily, she felt relieved. She worried that this feeling would never go away, that she would forever carry inside of her the stuttering child she’d once been.

  Lila began ferociously stabbing at the kale, farro, and chia seed salad that her dad had packed. She took an enormous bite and chewed quickly, one dangling ribbon of kale twitching at the corner of her mouth. Lila was tiny with keen brown eyes and sharp features; her steady diet of seeds and greens did nothing to alleviate her overall squirrel air. She vibrated with a unique mix of anxiety and optimism, aware of—but not particularly discouraged by—her low rank on the school’s totem pole. Nic admired Lila for this, and was grateful for her friendship.

  “Anyway,” Lila said, chewing, “I can’t believe Mr. Hylan wants us to write ten pages on one speech from Hamlet. Ten pages on one speech? That’s torture!” Lila would rather have written ten one-page essays on ten different plays; her mind was always spiraling from one subject to another.

  Nic, though, didn’t mind the writing part of the assignment. She was almost looking forward to it. But Mr. Hylan also wanted them to memorize and recite an assigned Shakespeare monologue in front of the whole class, and just thinking about this made Nic’s sandwich congeal into a lump in her throat. Maybe she’d pretend to be sick that day. There was no use to that, though; she could already tell Mr. Hylan was the type to make her give the presentation on the first day she returned to school. He’d probably be the first teacher at Kirke to call her mom in for a conference. Or maybe that distinction would fall to her world history teacher—three weeks into the school year, Nic still hadn’t said more than a word or two in class. And in Spanish, where Mrs. Taylor ruthlessly insisted on participation, Nic was so nervous that she sounded like she was choking each time she answered a question.

  She took stock of the remaining hours in the school day. Three more classes: biology, P.E., algebra. And then: freedom. Roy, her mother’s driver, would take her to the barn where she would ride her horse, Tru. Time moved slowly at school, but at the barn, the hours dissolved. A sense of calm hung in the air at Corcoran Stables and when Nic breathed it in, the humiliations of the day receded.

  She took a drink of water, letting her eyes roam back to the table where Lucas sat. He was talking with Emory Torres now, and something he said made her toss back her head and laugh just as Nic had done in the mirror that morning. Nic watched Lucas’s shoulders lower, his posture loosening as he grew ever more comfortable. She suspected she was more attuned than most people to the small movements of the body that hinted at the shifts of emotion and intention below the surface. Maybe she’d honed the skill during the hours she spent with Tru each day, immersed in nonverbal communication, the body language of animals.

  Now Emory moved slightly toward Lucas. At first Nic thought it was the terrible cafeteria lights that made the girl’s hair glow, but then she realized that Emory’s black bun was veined with yellow streaks, the same yellow-gold color that had made her mother think of her. The desire to be free, to escape, overwhelmed Nic. The hours between lunch and seeing Tru stretched unbearably long. She listened to Lila spin breathlessly from one subject to another, and she watched Emory’s beautiful hair glow, and she ate her sandwich, and she felt herself becoming smaller, and smaller, and smaller until it made complete sense that no one but little Lila Dorian could see her.

  From Nic’s tiny perch, the cafeteria was an orchestra warming up before a dark opera, a churning sea of color, a terrible Wonderland. If only, like Alice, she might find a piece of cake bearing the promise of change (to grow large or to shrink so small that she disappeared entirely; each alternative held an appeal). The voice in her ear would tell her to lift this cake to her lips and swallow it whole, and this time Nic was quite sure that she would listen.

  Chapter 3

  After Tyler moved out, I used my first paycheck from The Gail Gideon Show to hire a carpenter to build floor-to-ceiling shelves in the living room for my music collection. Once the shelves and the wall behind them were painted a matte black, the compact discs almost seemed to float. Yes, my wall of music was composed of compact discs, proving that, though the music I loved most was creat
ed in the seventies, the bulk of my music purchases were made in the nineties. I bought music digitally now, of course, but when I really loved an album, I also bought the CD. Every album on that wall meant something to me, and I wanted to be able to hold each one in my hand from time to time. The carpenter who did the work had peered down at me from two feet away and suggested he include a rolling ladder so that I could reach the CDs on the highest shelves. Nic had loved riding that ladder back and forth across the wall of music when she was little.

  The morning after Shayne called to tell me about the offer from ZoneTV, I stood in the living room and trailed my fingers along a shelf of CDs. I’d just returned from dropping off Nic at school—in the afternoon, we placed ourselves in Roy’s capable hands, but in the morning I liked to drive Nic myself. The house was quiet now, that wall of CDs like a bank of memories that silently beckoned me. Even those shelves, created without Tyler’s input or assistance, made me think of him. They were tied to our chronology, the history of us. What would it be like to live somewhere else, somewhere that did not make me think of Tyler every day?

  I tried to untangle my true feelings about the ZoneTV offer from my worries for my daughter. A television show would be the biggest change I’d faced in years. That thought might scare some people—my daughter included—but change had always excited me. Even on the night Tyler left me and I talked on and on during my show, leaning into the studio microphone, not realizing that every movement I made was being streamed onto the web, there was no fear in my message. Rage, yes. Indignation, shock, confusion—yes. Sadness, oh yes. But I wasn’t afraid. In fact, I think even in those moments when I was babbling about being a phoenix that would rise from the ashes of my marriage stronger and more inspired than ever to embrace a life of happiness, I shook as much from exhilaration as I did from anger. But the idea of pushing myself had always attracted me; I’d always wanted the truth and also the dare.

  Once upon a time, Tyler had loved that about me.

  I pulled the Velvet Underground’s eponymous album from its shelf and let it spin. Lou Reed’s voice filled the room. I sat on the couch and drank coffee and listened to “Pale Blue Eyes.” It was the song I had not been able to resist singing to Tyler on the night we met. I’d always thought that album was a bit too sweet, but within moments of meeting Tyler, I felt differently.

  I never thought that I’d be a wife, much less enjoy it. For a long time I teased Tyler that he’d tricked me into falling in love with him. We were juniors at Reed College on the night I first saw him, and it was Halloween. Tyler had dressed as Jim Morrison, a look he could pull off because he was tall and lanky and, at the time, wore his dark hair to his shoulders. I’d forgotten it was a costume party and arrived in the same clothes I’d been wearing for days—baby-doll dress, Doc Martens. With my smudged eyeliner and bedhead (I’d just awakened from a nap), Tyler later told me he’d thought I was in costume as Courtney Love.

  When someone bumped into me, I bumped into Tyler, spilling my drink. Tyler took off his whiskey-soaked shirt and tucked it into his pants so that it hung against his thigh like a painter’s rag. Four long, beaded necklaces swung against his chest.

  I hooked my finger into one of his necklaces, looked up into his pale blue eyes, and did my best Lou Reed impression.

  He smiled.

  We didn’t leave each other’s side all night.

  By the time I realized that he was soft-spoken and preppy, raised in Maryland on football games and hot chocolate, I was halfway in love. My college crew was a ragtag group of musicians and artists; no one understood my attraction to Tyler, who attended every one of his classes and spent his free time playing Frisbee golf. What could I say? He struck me as authentic. I’d never met someone so sure of himself, so true to himself. I was surprised by how his goodness moved me. He tried, for my sake, to understand punk rock. He delighted in finding ways to make me smile. He often succeeded.

  I’d been an angry child. Back in the Bay Area, my parents were deeply invested in what I called “country club life.” They visibly recoiled from my black clothes and loud music. My father claimed to love art, but his definition of the word was narrow; even art was an exclusive club in his mind and he rolled his eyes at the musicians that I admired. I dreamed of being a performer—of finding some way to express myself and someday inspiring people in the way that I’d been moved, comforted, and energized by the singers I loved. My father the art lover never once encouraged or supported me on that path. I suspected he was afraid of what I would say. I felt misunderstood, unloved—or loved, but conditionally, which to me was no love at all. It seemed to me that my parents strived for a life that was superficially beautiful: a gilded, empty box. Their aspirations horrified me as much as mine horrified them. I wanted to be free of their rules and shallow expectations. Most of all, perhaps, I wanted to prove them wrong.

  I had my own radio show on the Reed College station from ten at night until one in the morning. I could play, and say, anything I wanted. I played all of my favorites, those awesomely raging and rocking women from the sixties and seventies and eighties and nineties, and I would jump around the studio, singing along. In between tracks, I’d read a few lines from songs that I’d written. Sometimes I’d talk about how music made me feel. On the radio, I was an open book and people seemed to connect with me, with what I was doing. I developed a small, loyal group of listeners, some of whom would call in to the show from time to time. I wouldn’t say that I gave those callers advice; we’d just talk, and sometimes argue, about music. I’m sure I’d cringe to hear those shows now, but I’m still proud of my much younger self for doing them. It took guts to put myself out there, to share with strangers the music that mattered to me, to share the person that I was becoming.

  I loved being alone in the studio in the dark of night, but I was surprised to find that I also loved returning to my off-campus apartment and finding Tyler asleep in my bed. I’d strip down to my underwear and curl my small body against his long one. In the morning, he’d wake me with a cup of coffee that he’d bought at a café; he’d already been in the library for hours.

  Tyler was not at all like me, but he loved me. His love went a long way to healing me, to helping me know that I could be loved and be myself at the same time. I had not always known what to do with my energy—if I wasn’t talking, I was singing, and if I wasn’t singing, I was listening to music, each song pulsing through me like a life-saving blood transfusion. I felt propelled—maybe even tormented, at times—by a need to do something meaningful with my life. I took a breath when I was with Tyler. We were young. I was happier with him than I’d ever been without him.

  After graduation, he cut his hair and got a job at a management-consulting firm in San Francisco. Thanks to the cult following I’d developed at Reed, I landed a lowly gig behind the scenes of a Bay Area adult-contemporary radio station owned by Hawke Media. When Tyler asked me to marry him, I answered yes, surprising myself. I didn’t think we needed to be married to have the kind of life that I wanted to have, but he felt differently. Saying yes was my gift to him; his happiness was important to me. A couple of years later the music-programming director offered me the host position for a new show that they wanted to call Love Songs After Dark. That show would be the death of our marriage, but ironically if it hadn’t been for Tyler, I don’t think I would have accepted the job in the first place. Before I met him, it would have been impossible to fathom spending one night listening to saccharine ballads, let alone five nights every week. The show was so different from anything I’d envisioned for myself. It wasn’t that marriage declawed me, exactly, but I did feel like a tamer version of myself. I even hummed along to those cheesy songs I spun from seven to midnight each weeknight; it was when I burst into tears while listening to Michael Bolton’s “All for Love” one night in the studio that I guessed that I was pregnant. I’d pressed my hands to my stomach and promised my child that I would—that I already did—accept him or her wholly. No mother would ever l
ove a child more. I felt an overwhelming sense of loss for the relationship that I would never have with my parents, but I also felt full of gratitude, and resolve, for all that I could and would give to my own child.

  If marriage changed me, parenthood changed Tyler. His previously mild inclination for a conventional life flared when Nic was born. When he returned home from work each night, I was on air at the studio. We could not spend the evening discussing our days over plates of spaghetti, or refilling each other’s wineglasses, or unwinding together with books in front of a fire. And I wasn’t there to tuck Nic into bed at night Monday through Friday—if this upset anyone, I thought it should have been me or Nic, but it was Tyler who tossed and turned and grumbled when I returned home late at night about how Nic’s babyhood was being shortchanged. Over the next few years, he became increasingly agitated that my job kept me from being present for a family dinner on weeknights. Though we both wanted to have more children, Tyler insisted that it did not make sense to consider having another baby until my work schedule changed.

  It was only in retrospect that I realized Tyler had given me an ultimatum.

  At the time, I could not believe that he really wanted me to quit my job. Our daughter had a wonderful life—she spent her days with me; her nights with her father. On the weekends, we were all together. Our situation wasn’t conventional, and perhaps it wasn’t ideal, but who cared? Not me. I thought we were making our own way; I thought we were happy. I loved my husband, and I thought we would find a way through these challenges and, in the process, grow our family. I thought we would always be together. I felt betrayed when he asked me to find another radio job with better hours, as though this were an easy task, as though it were not rare enough that I hosted my own show before the age of thirty. It felt to me that what he was really asking was that I give up a life of music—a career that I loved—so that we could share a meal. Had I asked him to quit his job so that he could join Nic and me for lunch each day? I had not.